At Least 15 Die at Saudi Mosque from Suicide Bomber

ISTANBUL — A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people on Thursday, including 12 members of a Saudi police force, when he detonated explosives in a mosque in southern Saudi Arabia, the state news agency there reported.

The bombing was the deadliest attack in recent years on Saudi Arabia’s police forces, and the most recent in a series of attacks on mosques in the kingdom.

Most of the recent attacks have targeted mosques used by the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia; the Islamic State, which considers Shiites heretics, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency said the attack Thursday was at a mosque belonging to a local security force in the region of Asir, in the southwest.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated on social media, saying the bomber had used an explosives belt to blow up “a monument of apostasy” that supported the Saudi state and its “crusader masters.”

While Saudi Arabia promotes a conservative interpretation of Islam similar to that of the Islamic State, clerics in the country have denounced the group as misguided and bloodthirsty. Saudi Arabia has joined the United States-led coalition that is waging an air campaign against the group in Iraq and Syria.

But the Islamic State movement has found support in some parts of Saudi society, and thousands of Saudis have traveled abroad to join the jihadists.

In recent months, the Saudi security services have announced the arrest of hundreds across the kingdom said to have been supporting the group, planning attacks or promoting its ideology.

But those crackdowns have not succeeded in stopping the attacks. Saudi officials have claimed that the Islamic State’s ability to indoctrinate aspiring militants and communicate with them through the Internet has made it even more difficult to prevent violence.

Leaders of the Islamic State consider Saudi Arabia a heretical state and have called on supporters to carry out attacks inside the kingdom and elsewhere.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: At Least 15 Die as Bomb Hits Saudi Mosque. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe